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Blog / May 2007
Medical Facilities are Cracking Down
May 1, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
More and more hospitals and medical facilities are requiring photo identification when they check patients in. Medical identity theft is growing and the results are serious. Read more about what it is and its consequences in a past medical id theft...
New Article in PC World About Truston
May 1, 2007 by Tom Fragala
PC World, which wrote about Truston in their staff blog back in February, wrote about us again. Erik Larkin, who wrote the blog post, contributed a well done piece today in the Privacy Watch section of the PCWorld web site....
Virginia Tech Shootings Scam
May 3, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
Beware of ANY emails regarding the recent Virginia Tech shootings. There is a scam that comes by email claiming to have video from the shootings. If you open up the email to watch the video you actually download a computer...
$9,000 Mistake in Medical Bill
May 4, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
A father found that a Denver hospital over-charged for his son’s hospital stay by $9,000. When he examined the bill he found huge over-charges mostly related to medications. Not many people scrutinize their hospital bills. They think the insurance companies are...
TSA Loses Hard Drive with 100,000 Employees' Social Security Numbers
May 6, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has lost a computer hard drive with information on 100,000 of its past and present employees. The files of TSA employees from January of 2002 to August of 2005 were on the hard drive with records of...
Scams That Target Those With Bad Credit
May 6, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
I read an excellent blog with a summary of scams that target individuals and businesses with less-than-stellar credit. Scammers know that as your credit score goes down, your options for credit do too. They feed upon the desperation of an individual with a...
Debit Card Scam Uncovered on Campus
May 8, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
Three Penn State Berks students were arrested for their part in a debit card scam. They had convinced other students to hand over their ATM cards, and wait a few days before claiming their card was stolen. Meanwhile the students in charge of the...
ID Thief Gives Whole New Perspective
May 10, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
I found a really interesting article on ID theft that provides a whole different perspective – it’s from the ID thief’s point of view. The thief tells how he did it so that the public can learn from it (but only after...
Now They're Coming Out of the Woodwork to Confess
May 15, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
Here’s another account from an identity thief on how he did it. James Jackson is in prison now, but he claims to have stolen the identities of such celebrities as Danny De Vito, Mel Gibson and a federal judge. I don’t...
New version of MyTruston released
May 15, 2007 by Tom Fragala
You probably did not notice it but we released a new version of the MyTruston service the other night. It includes many new features, especially improvements on the "back end" that users do not see. These new features include: 1....
Truston Featured on MSN.com
May 16, 2007 by Tom Fragala
We were a featured link on the main MSN.com home page (still are currently) as one of “Today’s Pick’s”. We got a 10X traffic boost and a surge in membership. The MSN.com homepage linked to a MSNBC page actually, which...
Businesses Scammed with Fake Invoices
May 17, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
I’ve blogged before that identity thieves often target businesses by creating fake checks in the business’ name and cashing them. Another twist that I’m hearing more and more about are scammers sending fake invoices in the hopes that a business will go...
Shame on IBM!
May 18, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
IBM is one of the leaders in encryption software and other data management technologies so it’s very surprising that their retirees’ data has been compromised. It happened when the human resources department’s back-up tapes were transported by a contractor from...
Debt Collection Protection for ID Theft Victims
May 19, 2007 by Tom Fragala
Did you know? The California Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (CA Civil Code section 1788.18) prohibits a debt collector from continuing to collect on a debt of an alleged victim of identity theft if the victim has completed all the...
Not Again?!?
May 20, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
The newly merged Alcatel-Lucent just announced a similar mishap to IBM’s – which I recently blogged about. Employees of Alcatel-Lucent and retirees of Lucent have been notified that an unencrypted CD has been reported missing. The disc was prepared by Hewitt Associates,...
Beware of Social Security Card Scam
May 21, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
A new scam is surfacing in Maine where the caller tries to convince the person on the other end of the phone that his social security card is no longer valid and that a new one needs to be reissued. It...
InfoUSA Knowingly Sells Lists of Elderly to Criminals
May 22, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
An article in The New York Times describes a truly harmful practice. Companies that maintain data on individuals often create lists of the elderly, those with cancer, even those that gamble and then sell those lists to companies that have been known to commit fraud. An unethical...
Do Credit Offers or Reports Effect Your Credit Score?
May 22, 2007 by Tom Fragala
No. Pre-screened offers of credit or insurance do not harm your credit score. Neither do the free annual credit reports, free victim reports or legitimate paid credit file disclosures. (“Credit report” and “credit file disclosure” are different names for the same...
Truston Featured Again in PC Magazine
May 22, 2007 by Tom Fragala
Neil Rubenking at PC Magazine wrote an article on ID theft titled Protect Your Identity that was published today. Truston was one of the featured solutions including ZoneAlarm’s Internet Security Suite....
The Jury Duty Scam Keeps on Coming
May 24, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
I constantly hear rumblings about the Jury Duty Scam and Tom Fragala has blogged about it previously on this site. Based on this article it sounds like the residents of Florida are getting hit hard by it. According to the investigators, scheme artists are calling victims...
Senator Allard Is On The Right Track
May 25, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
Senator Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) announced that the provision he introduced to fight identity theft has been included in The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007. Currently, the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Department of Homeland Security are prevented from sharing...
Teens Are Key Targets for ID Thieves
May 26, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
Identity thieves go after the identities of teens and young children because they know they have a lot of time before the victim will check his credit - often the thief can use the fraudulent ID for many years before...
Identity Theft Fear Damages Banking Profitability
May 28, 2007 by Tom Fragala
I got this article in FinanceTech via the Javelin blog. A study was done by Javelin which reports that the banking industry is leaving $8 billion on the table because over tens of millions of US consumers don’t bank online because...
Temporary Email Services Reviewed
May 28, 2007 by Tom Fragala
Sizlopedia did a review of the top 20 temporary and disposable emails services. These services can help you fight spam, spyware, and save hassles from sites that require registration. I blogged about this in the past here and here. Um,...
Oops! Medical Center Exposes Patients to Identity Theft (Again)
May 31, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) sent donation solicitation letters to thousands of its former patients. Unfortunately, the patients’ social security number appeared through the window of the envelope. Yikes! Oddly enough, UPMC didn’t learn its lesson from a previous mishap. ...
Checking if Your Child is an ID Theft Victim Can Be Stressful
May 31, 2007 by Michelle Pastor
Identity thieves target children because odds are they can use the child’s identity for years before anyone will notice. I originally posted the following blog in January of 2007, but am revisiting it in case you missed it the first...
Quote
May 31, 2007 by Tom Fragala
I saw this on Quote of the Day and it jumped out me as apropos to the identity theft protection market. It's not a matter of whether or not someone's watching over you. It's just a question of their intentions. ...